Spanish Twenty-Somethings Can Look Forward to Years of Doing It in Fairly Uncomfortable Places

What do you get when you mix 52 percent youth unemployment with the highest home ownership rate in the European Union? A culture that disdains rental homes and “millions” of Spanish 20-somethings living with their parents and getting it on in the backseats of their automobiles, according to the founder of a real estate website that’s promoting renting as a potential salve amid the nation’s real estate bust. From a Bloomberg story on the Spanish housing market:

Idealista.com’s pitch to Spaniards in their 20s still living with mom and dad is simple: Rent your own place or end up having sex in the back of a cramped car for years to come. The new 20-second TV advertisement by Spain’s biggest real estate website features still shots of couples and threesomes caught naked in cars with looks of surprise. It’s aimed at 20-to 29-year-old Spaniards, seven in 10 of whom still haven’t left home as Spain’s unemployment rate soars to a record.“We were brainstorming the moment when people most think ‘I need my own home’ and having sex in a car sprang to mind,” said Fernando Encinar, co-founder of Idealista. “Millions of Spaniards have gone through it.”

Bloomberg, we’re happy to add, also sexed up last week’s story on the Spanish banking crisis by noting that the nation’s enfeebled savings institutions would mean funding cuts to an organization that provides health services to prostitutes and passed out more than 210,000 free condoms last year. Though we hasten to point out the obvious, which is that the Spanish economy has a long road to recovery before it, and if it takes flashing some skin to keep terminal customers interested in July of 2012, we’re a little worried about the anecdotes on purvey in 2014, which is the earliest that the IMF anticipates the Spanish recession ending.